At 5am the Vally of the Kings and Queens look tremendous

Taking a boat across the nile at 5am can be interesting.......( Excuse my boob, I dont think it was awake yet....)

A 4:30am wake - up, 5a luggage outside the door and a light breakfast cause who knows how the boat ride is gonna be??? We all pile on the boat and take off, our group took up two boats. As we crossed the Nile the sun began to rise and you could see the otherside of the river, people just waking up, little mud huts, shacks made out of cardboard all very serene. We really gave them a wake up call because of the lovely arabic music we were blasting. At any rate my boat won the race across the river and we were the first to land AND the first to be accosted by salesmen and boys selling bookmarks and scarfs.

The Vally of the Kings is tremendous. You have to take a tram up to where the tombs are. There are 11 tombs in all, we went into three: Ramses the 2, Ramses the 5 and Ramses the 1st. When you enter a tomb you cannot bring a camera. SO here is an idea of what you would see: You walk down underground and into the tomb, as soon as you enter you see in front of you just how far the tomb spans and on either side of you rows and rows of heiroglyphics painted on the walls. The COLOR IS STILL STRONG AND VIBRANT. As you begin to walk through the tomb you see little rooms to either side of you that have paintings of jugs or jewelry or clothing etc. These rooms all held those items originally. The egyptians have NEVER found any tomb (officially) with any of the spoils left in them, the have all been looted. By 9 am it is scorching and the only place to find respite is the tombs ( which are now peopled with tons of tours, we were early and beat the rush) or in the bus, we had a big schedule so we left the Kings and headed to the Queens.





On a side note while we were here Andrea was balloning over Luxor and Once we arrived on the bus she texted me that " she had landed on a field, but had no idea where she was"




Vally of the Queens - Here again no camera's inside, we did see a mumified fetus though, that was really fascinating, you could still see the cloth and the body very clearly. It was housed in a glass case in one of the tombs.

From here we headed to the Temple of Hatshepsut
(check out her story "http://www.bediz.com/hatshep/story.html")

She was known as the "Queen who would be King" Amazing!!! This temple was build into the mountain and was in front of the Vally of the Queens. It was awe inspiring. Her story is phenomenal, we could take pictures of the heiroglyphics at her temple here is a sample of some of them ( PS I am sweating in all of the pictures because it was 115 degrees or for you canadians reading about 42 celcius)






Then an exciting opportunity to see how alabaster was made AND an opportunity to buy some if we so chose. From there we headed back to the boat, crossed the nile, walked about 70 meters in the hot, hot sun and arrived at the Temple of Luxor. This temple is situated right along the Nile in the middle of the city. It was originally connected to the temple of Karnak ( our afternoon excursion ) by a road bordered by a rows of Sphinxs. Only about 200 meters are left the rest are underground and being excavated as we speak.

* The interesting thing about this photo of the temple of Luxor is that you can see one of the obelisks is missing from the front. That Obelisk was traded with the french for a clock that is at the Sadat Memorial. Strange but true!








This last picture is particulary fascinating to me. It is a mosque that was built into the temple of Luxor. You can see the wall below it is very rough, that is because when the Mosque was built it was actually on the "ground" the rest of the temple was buried under the sand. Through years of excavation the Temple was revealed and that is what we walked through today. At this point in the day 12p, it is stiffling, no amount of water or shad can fully revitalize you. At the temple of Luxor we were witness to 3 people in various parts of the temple collapsing from heat. If this every happens to you,dumping a bottle of water over someones head is the quickest way to cool someone down.
No. The day was not over, from here we went back to the boat for LUNCH. Took a 3 hour siesta and met up again at 5pm to visit the HUGE Temple of Karnak.





The pictures above are of the Temple entrance, we were lucky enough to go off the beaten track to one of the side temples that surround the temple of Karnak.






This small temple was dedicated to the goddess Sekhmet. we stepped inside and it was only us, there were two rooms it seemed one larger and a smaller one with the statue of Sekhmet still standing at one end. This encounter was extremely emotional for me and impacted me for more then anything had thus far. We had an opportunity to stay there and feel the Vibrations. It was amazing! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekhmet)
From there we wondered and headed back to the boat. We had dinner enjoyed a couple "stella" and headed to bed. Tomorrow was pretty much a free day, we sail to Edfu and were going to see the temple at night.